Invisible No More

There once was an orphan girl who passing as a man served in the British army and navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Born in London in 1778, Mary Ann Talbot was one of sixteen illegitimate children of a British baron. Or maybe she wasn’t. But it’s a great origin story, no? At age 14 she became the mistress of a sea captain who signed her on as his “footboy” on the way to Santa Domingo under the name “John Taylor.”Now that must have set a couple tongues to wagging on the ship. Anyway Talbot, as Taylor, ended up as a drummer-boy in the first war against Revolutionary France. Her lover the captain died, she was wounded (but treated herself) but the whole fighting in wars as a male stuck. She deserted the British, an instead joined a French ship as a cabin boy. Then the British captured the ship, and she became a powder monkey for the British, carrying bags of gunpowder from the powder magazine in the ship’s hold to the gun crews. Then after being wounded again, and being captured again (this time by the French) she spent 18 months in a dungeon in Dunkirk. Now mind you, she apparently was still passing all this time.

By the time she was freed in a 1796 prisoner exchange she apparently decided to take a break from the whole war scene. The war scene, yes, but not the passing as a man scene. Talbot signed on with a British merchant ship, the Ariel, captained by John Field. She must have cut an impressive figure, because she was essentially made agent on board, keeping the books, paying the men and supervising the loading and unloading of cargo. She sailed to New York and more importantly for our interests here, to Rhode Island.

In Rhode Island, Talbot as Taylor visited with captain Field’s family in Providence. On the voyage, Fields had taken the young man under his wing. In Providence for two weeks, Field included Taylor in all the family’s social life, including a visit to his own father. Field’s wife took to him fondly as well. It seems the Field family had a plan for the promising young man. Among the household was Field’s niece, a young woman who became quite attached to Taylor. The niece (who’s not named in Taylor’s own account) apparently was so bold as to propose marriage. Taylor would later say, “I made several excuses, but could not divert her attention from what she proposed. ” Mrs. Field supposedly put up a token objection on the basis of Taylor’s youth and world inexperience (one wonders if she knew about the whole 18 months in a Dunkirk dungeon). The niece would not be deterred, however. Before she’d allow Talbot to leave she insisted on a picture, a miniature for which Talbot sat in the full uniform of an American naval officer. Only with reassurances from both Field and Taylor of their speedy return could the two make it out of the state.

Field promised Taylor that after one or two more voyages together he’d retire and give over the vessel to Taylor’s captaincy. Unfortunately Taylor’s luck didn’t hold. Shortly after departing on their next voyage, Taylor and another seamen left ship in plain seaman’s (rather than officer’s) dress for a little excursion. They ran into a press-gang. The British Navy, short of sailors in large part because they’d been getting killed quite frequently in the ongoing battles with the French, had taken to basically kidnapping sailors and forcing them into service. (In another 14 years or so the practice would become the primary justification for the US’s first foreign war.) Taylor could come up with only one way out — literally. She outted herself as herself much to the surprise and initial disbelief of her captors. Capt. Field found it awfully hard to believe as well. When he heard about it, Field urged Talbot to resume being Taylor and rejoin their voyages. she never did. She lived out her life alternating between male and female dress, sometimes living as a woman, sometimes passing as a man. But she never returned to Providence, and one has to wonder, did Captain Field ever tell his niece?

To read Mary Ann Talbot’s story as she told it herself The Life and Surprising Adventures of Mary Ann Talbot, in the Name of John Taylor (1809)

The next time you’re searching around for evidence of the influence of LGBT people in Rhode Island, you need look no further than downtown Pawtucket.

 

The Deborah Cook Sayles Library, built between 1899 and 1902. The Library was the first public library in the country to allow patrons free and open access to the stacks, one of the first to be open of Sunday (often the only day blue collar workers had off work), and one of the first to allow children under the age of fourteen into the library in the first place. As such it was a model of a modern, egalitarian vision of education and information for all.

But it was more than than. The Sayles Library was designed by an architectural firm from Boston– Cram, Goodhue & Ferguson. The same firm would soon after design the campus of West Point, and much of Princeton University. Eventually they would even design Cathedral Church of St.

John the Divine and Rockefeller Center in New York City. The building is as one critic has described it: “a stunning building, rising splendidly above its indifferent surroundings, showing just the severe beauty one would expect of a romantic Goth who was also a Platonic idealist.” Fancy talk for a beautiful, unusual building with a Greek style, Ionic columns, and fine white granite from Maine. And it is indeed very much not Victorian.But what’s that got to do with the gay? Ralph Adams Cram, the principal architect on the project, and his primary partner, Bertram Goodhue, were prominent members of Beacon Hill’s fin-de-siecle bohemian gay subculture. Cram was the author ofThe Decadent: Being the Gospel of Inaction which described the Boston bohemian world in a “decrepit and degenerate age.”Though it was published anonymously, Cram would later boast “in some way… word got abroad that [ours] was a queer sort of place, and in certain more conservative circles this did no good to our budding reputations.”

Other Rhode Island buildings that bear Cram and Goodhue’s touch? Emmanuel Church in Newport, the turn of the century remodeling of Grace Church in Providence, and the Chapel at St. George’s School in Newport.

Douglass Shand-Tucci. Boston Bohemia, 1881-1900: Ralph Adams Cram Life and Architecture. University of Massachusetts Press (November 1996)

When the General Assembly and the Governor to finally do the right thing and codify marriage equality in Rhode Island, there’s likely to be some serious consideration of just who the official “first couple to be married” will be. It’s happened in every state so far. Del Martin and Phyllis Lyons managed to do it twice in California. Who it will be in RI is probably anyone’s guess at this point.

But one thing’s for sure. They won’t actually be the first same sex couple to be married in Rhode Island. No, I’m not talking about commitment ceremonies. I’m talking about actual in front of a justice of the peace with an actual license.

That honor may actually go to John Murphy Goodshot and Elwin Ellis Cox. Goodshot (21) and Cox (21), a Navy Seabee were married September 1, 1956 in East Greenwich, RI. Mrs Maude Goodshot, the proud mother, served as a witness. Nine days later, Cox applied for a dependency allowance from the Navy for his “wife”, and the pair received four payments of $137.10 each.

Of course there was something of a catch in this story. See John Goodshot was transgendered, and she was dressed as a woman, and using the name Jela St. John Murphy when the couple married, not as two men, but as a man and a woman. Jela had been living as a woman for two years at the time of the wedding.

The couple might have lived a long married life together with no one (least of all the Navy) the wiser, but Cox deserted the Navy four months after the marriage. He and Jela (as well as Jela’s mother) moved to Colorado and the Navy began a search and investigation which revealed the circumstances of the marriage.

Two years later the pair were arrested. Goodshot in August in Denver, Colorado and Cox in September in Bay City, Michigan.

Goodshot plead with the court to be allowed to undergo sex reassignment surgery (this was only 5 years after Christine Jorgenson’s surgery, by the way). Instead, as a condition of probation, the judge ordered that Goodshot undergo court ordered psychiatric treatment at government expense to “help him regain his masculine qualities.”

No one seems to know what happened to Jela St. John Murphy Cox or Elwin Cox. The case made the national press – including the nascent gay press – in venues as varied as Sarasota, FL, Nova Scotia, and even Jet Magazine. Jela’s picture accompanied some of the stories. The news articles at least, if not the readers, were surprisingly non-judgemental in their reporting, particularly taking matter of factly Jela’s request for reassignment surgery. But you can’t but think the entire experience with the legal system has to have been traumatic.

When the day comes for that first same sex marriage in Rhode Island, raise an extra glass for Jela and Elwin, where ever they might be.
___________________

Addendum: In December 1958, Elwin Cox was sentenced to two years in jail (suspended) and four years probation for “cheating the government in a marriage fraud” and ordered to repay Uncle Sam the $548. US District Court Judge John Picard asked “if he had broken the marriage off.” When Cox replied that yes, they had, Picard suggested that they might need to file for divorce, and suggested that Cox consult a lawyer.

Image how different Rhode Island law might now be if that divorce case had actually happened.

With the publication of two big US LGBT celebrity autobiographies in the last couple weeks – Portia De Rossi Degeneres’ Unbearable Lightness and Ricky Martins’ Me, and more academic but no less provocative works like R. Tripp Evans’ Grant Wood, A Life – it seems like gay content is everywhere in the local public library.

That wasn’t always the case. Pretty much anyone over the age of forty can attest to combing the shelves of the library searching in vain for anything that spoke to their lives as a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered person. There were no explanations, no validations, no visions of how the world might be elsewhere, or in a different time, or in a possible future. Even university libraries were apparently bare of LGBT content – except there perhaps you might run across a medical volume pathologizing same sex attraction, denying same sex love, never even broaching the possibility of a public proud life.

But things have changed – maybe not completely but they have changed. And in large measure you can thank a Rhode Islander for that. Israel David Fishman was born on February 1938 in Westerly, Rhode Island. At the American Library Association meeting in Detroit in 1970, Fishman conceived the idea of a gay liberation group within the library profession, and he a few others organized the Task Force on Gay Liberation, a section of the Social Responsibilities Round Table.

Soon Barbara Gittings (not a librarian or a Rhode Islander, though an honorary both) joined Fishman taking a leadership role in helping to expand the Taskforce’s activities and influence. The Taskforce of the ALA became a model for the activities of other nascent LGBT factions within professional organizations – groups that would go on to change the face of psychology, medicine, history, anthropology, the law and every other field of study.

Fishman joked in later years that when he first conceived of the Taskforce in many ways it was a effort to meet other gay men in the profession. But of little acorns great oaks are born. How many of our most fruitful, world changing institutions have begun from the simple desire to meet more of our own kind?

I warn you this one’s not about Rhode Island. I hope that doesn’t upset you too much. If it does, you can just skip this. I have some great Rhode Island material cooking that will appear soon; you can just wait for that if you like.

This is about two women, two lesbians, who profoundly changed the way many Christians and Jews worship.

In the late 1960s, the “Jesus movement” began as a Christian revival stream in the hippie counter culture. Sweeping North America and Europe, the Jesus movement brought a focus on the life of early Christianity, challenging the sectarian structures of organized religion, calling for a return to simplicity and communal living. Emphasizing God’s love and work of the Holy Spirit to move humans to their most Christlike potential, the Jesus movement challenged the sterility of mainstream Protestantism.

The most lasting legacy of the Jesus movement is what has become known as contemporary Christian music. From Amy Grant to Jars of Clay, it all dates back to the Jesus movement. More importantly it all flows back to one woman and one song. The first contemporary Christian music group, Children of the Day, was founded by songwriter, Marsha Stevens. Steven’s first song, For Those Tears I Died became the band’s, and CCM’s, first anthem.

You’re probably thinking boy they don’t look like hit musicians. That may be true. But that song entered the hymnals of thousands of congregations in the US and Europe. The words have been translated into uncounted languages. It has reached around the world and back again. All those folk masses you went to? All those songs around the church camp campfires? That was the lasting influence of Marsh Stevens.

And when Marsha Stevens came out as a lesbian? Many of those congregations tore that song from their hymnals, heedless of what other venerable hymn was on the reverse side, and sent the pages enmass to her — with promises of hell fire for her sins. It was years before Stevens again began to sing. But she did and she went back out of the road, living in her bus, and bring a message of hope, love and pride to Christian LGBT people. She even sang from the main stage at the 2000 Millenium March on Washington. The Mother of Contemporary Christian Music is a lesbian.

Elsewhere in the early 1970s the same kind of spiritual yearning was stirring within the Reform Jewish community in North America. In a synagogue, a young self-taught musician realized she was bored. The rabbi was talking, the choir was singing and nobody was doing anything. There was no participation. And then something special happened.

A tune came to her and the words of “V’ahavta,” a prayer that commands Jews to love God, fit perfectly. When she taught the song to some high school students, they were quickly singing joyously, arm and arm, tears running down their cheeks. In the nearly forty years since, Debbie Friedman’s music has become on intregal part of the Reform Jewish tradition. Her music is sung in services, around the campfire at summer camp, on retreats, in English, Hebrew and countless other languages.

Her music has become such a part of the experience of Judaism that thousands have sung her songs without realizing that the music was not simply handed down from generations past. Her music spawned generations of young Jewish spiritual singers and brought joyous singing to congregations across the globe.

Debbie Friedman died Jan. 9, 2011. Her New York Times obituary only begins to explain her importance to the spiritual lives of so many and to the spiritual power of the Reform movement. But one small quiet line speaks volumes. “Many of her English lyrics concerned theempowerment of women and other disenfranchised groups, stemming, her associates said on Monday, from the quiet pride she took in her life as a gay woman.”

Two women. Two voices. One Spirit. One humanity.

Help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing.

During a long, snowy winter, it’s sometimes hard to remember what it’s like to get out and about in nature. But soon our thoughts will turn to spring, rebirth of nature, perhaps even romping in the woods.

One of the best places to enjoy the beauty of Rhode Island is the wonderful Burlingame State Park in Charlestown. Located on Route 1, Burlingame has it all — the beach, the woods, 700 camp sites and according to wikipedia, even a yurt.

Originally purchased in 1927 as part of an effort by the state to maintain open natural space to offset the industrial centers of the state, and to assure generations of future city dwellers the opportunity relax and enjoy the natural world, Burlingame became during the Great Depression the home and artistic palette of the 141st Company of the Civilian Conservation Corps. One of the New Deal bureaus which provided work for the displaced industrial masses, the CCC employed out of work young men in their late teens and early twenties at Burlingame to build fire places, hiking trails, camp sites, and beach improvements. Did I mention that the first efforts of the CCC workers went to building the barracks where they would live for months at a time?

Now I ask you what happens when you send young men into the woods together for long periods of time?

The next time you spend any time in Burlingame, you might want to remember those CCC boys. In fact you might want to remember one in particular. His name was José Gomes. It’s not clear if José was of continental Portuguese, Azorean or Cape Verdean descent. But he was apparently quite talented. The July 1, 1933 edition of Happy Days the newspaper of the CCC described his talent. “[G]asps of amazement” were followed by hasty necktie adjustment and hair combing when “Josie” Gomes appeared on stage to open a vaudeville show sponsored by members of CCC Company 141. ‘She’ sang ‘Old Man River’ and had many hearts fluttering with unfeigned admiration until ‘she’ disclosed ‘herself’ as Joe Gomes — he-man forest recruit, and a swell female impersonator.” The song was “the high spot of the evening’s entertainment” Happy Days gushed.

(Yes, the newspaper of the CCC actually used the female pronoun “she” in 1933.)

You might also remember some women as well. In the late 1920s Dorothy Schmitz and several of her lesbian friends often camped, swam, boated and generally enjoyed themselves at Watchaug Pond the heart of current day Burlingame.

Schmitz lived her life, before and after a short-lived heterosexual marriage, in committed romantic relationships with other women.

Everywhere, we have always been everywhere.

See also:

Wesley Chenault, Stacy Braukman, Atlanta History Center, Gay and Lesbian Atlanta. Arcadia Publishing, 2008.

Colin R. Johnson, “Camp Life: The Queer History of “Manhood” in the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933–1937″ American Studies, Volume 48, Number 2, Summer 2007

 

So Kurt took Blaine to the prom on Glee. I assume that wasn’t a spoiler for anyone who cares about the show, right? But did you know that in 1980 Cumberland high school senior Aaron Fricke brought Paul Gilbert to his prom?

Of course he did have to sue the school department to do it. Aaron Fricke, with the help of a new legal group called Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD for the acronym challenged) sued in US District Court. Presiding Judge Raymond J. Pettine (who also ruled in our favor in the ‘Toward a Gayer Bicentennial” case, but that’s another story) ordered the school not only to allow Aaron and Paul to go to the prom together, but also to provide them with security to assure their safety.

The Fricke vs Lynch case is one of the milestones of LGBTQ legal history in the US. All those who’ve been able to take a same-sex date to the prom – like Constance McMillan and maybe even you – have Aaron Fricke and Raymond Pettine to thank.

Listen to Aaron telling his own story on this GLAD podcast

Read Pettine’s opinion